


Itsy Bitsy Spidey

by AutumnSouls



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Peter Parker, Badass Spidey, Fame, Female Peter Parker, Gen, Genius Peter Parker, Identity Reveal, Instagram, Internet Famous, Peter Parker & Shuri Friendship, Peter Parker Acts Like a Spider, Peter Parker Can Wield Mjolnir, Peter is a Little Shit, Post-Battle of New York (Marvel), Secret Identity, Social Media, Timeline What Timeline, Twitter, Vibranium (Marvel), Wakanda (Marvel), Wakandan Technology, and maybe more?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2019-08-19 23:29:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16544384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnSouls/pseuds/AutumnSouls
Summary: The world likes Spider-Woman well enough, but they’re quite enamored with Penelope Parker. Nobody knows she’s Spider-Woman. But when it comes to managing her personal life, getting kidnapped by Winter Soldiers, waking up on strange planets, and fighting powerful enemies and allies alike... she's not entirely sure if this makes her life any better or worse.





	1. Penelope Parker

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a little thing I wrote, but I'm not sure if people would actually be interested in this? I love the idea of a female Peter Parker and I do have a plot planned out, but if it's not something enough people want, I don't want to waste too much time on it, considering I have so many other things I'm writing.

It wasn’t every day she smuggled alien technology home.

She knew it wasn’t legal, and somewhat stupid, and completely irresponsible, but really, the stuff was just _sitting there_. How could she resist? If the government was taking in Chitauri technology, and they were, why couldn’t she? She probably had better intentions with it than they did anyway.

And how it would help her...

Penelope Parker hadn’t been there for the Chitauri invasion — she hadn’t had a suit then and was still mourning Uncle Ben — but it showed more than anything that New York could use another superhero. Her strength already surpassed that of _Captain freaking America’s_ (Google), and she was only fourteen. She could only imagine how powerful she’d be when she fully grew up.

And while, yes, she _was_ fourteen, and sure, her current suit was practically just sweatpants, a hoodie, and a dumb mask with even dumber goggles. But that was what this new tech was for! She’d be able to improve nearly everything if she could just reverse engineer the Chitauri weaponry.

She entered her apartment and made to go to her room.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Hm?” Penelope said absentmindedly, turning to look at Aunt May, who was on the couch watching TV. “Oh, just some science equipment.”

As if she’d tell Aunt May she was a superpowered girl who could probably punch Captain America’s lights out. No, this whole thing would have to remain a secret. From everybody.

“Yeah?” Aunt May said. “Got a project?”

“Mhm!” Penelope said. “I’ve gotta go put it up — I might get started on it now, actually. It’s a surprise. They’re still talking about the Avengers?”

Aunt May looked back to the TV and sighed. “Yeah, it’s all they’ve talked about for the last few weeks. Aliens, magic, gods... the world’s going crazy... Penelope?”

But Penelope had already left the room, still hearing Aunt May’s mutters with her advanced hearing. The world had changed. They had already known about Iron Man and the Hulk and the existence of _something_ down in New Mexico, but this had been a whole new step. _Aliens_. The space and science community, including her, had gone completely mad with the knowledge that they weren’t alone in the universe.

It was time she changed too.

Well, more than she already had. She was practically somewhere in between Captain America and the Hulk, so really, she had already changed. Whatever.

She shook her head to clear the mess of thoughts, settled down in her chair, and took out a small piece of Chitauri tech. It was time to reverse engineer it.

Two hours later she accepted that she had absolutely no idea how to do such a thing.

Three hours later she seriously considered telling Ned about her powers. She had always been good with technology, but she could never top Ned at it. She now doubted even Ned would be able to reverse engineer such things, not anytime soon, but given enough time and motivation (the motivation being that he’d be helping out a superhero), Penelope was confident he’d be able to do it.

But no, she’d tell him as a last resort. Sure though she was in Ned’s tech skills, he wasn’t exactly the best at keeping secrets. But... couldn’t he know about the Chitauri stuff without knowing about the superhero stuff? Speaking of, she really needed to come up with a name for herself.

Spider-Girl would become unsuitable when she got older and Spider-Woman didn’t exactly fit her now — though perhaps it would be best if the world thought her to be a woman, not a girl.

Or a man.

Double the deception.

But this would require certain additions to the suit. Fourteen though she was, her body had grown enough that it was distinguishable as a female body. A chest binder, padding around the waist, and... and perhaps a hoodie to hide the bulge her hair might make under a mask, at the back of her neck.

Penelope spun her chair in circles, beaming her elation at the expectations of the future.  

Then her Spider-Sense buzzed in the back of her head and she stood up.

The doorbell rang.

She rushed out the door, down the stairs, and to the front door, ready to defend her Aunt May from any danger — but it was not danger, not in the traditional sense. At her door, in front of a dumbstruck Aunt May, stood Tony Stark.

Looking both amused and impressed, he stared down Penelope. “Hello, thief. Well, technically, can’t consider you a thief if the owners are dead — you’re welcome, by the way — but you know what I mean.” He alternated his gaze from Penelope to Aunt May and back again. “Can I come in?”

Penelope gulped and Aunt May only turned an open-mouthed stare toward her.

“I’m going to come in,” Stark said, stepping in and closing the door. “So a little camera caught a little you —” he pointed at Penelope “— finding a little tech, taking it, and then coming here to your little home.” He gave the slightest of grimaces. “Not that your home is little. Look, I’m here for the Chitauri tech your kid found and decided to take.” As he spoke, he gestured quite often with his hands.

Aunt May looked at her disbelievingly. “Penny?”

Penelope couldn’t take her eyes off of Tony Stark. _Iron Man_. _Here_ , in her home, looking for _her_ , because — oh, _shit_. She opened her mouth to speak and nothing came out. Stark gave her a small moment more before he nodded and moved past her.

“Where’s her room? You’re lucky I came here — lucky I saw the footage before the real enforcers of this stuff showed up. I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t seen you tinkering with it in the alleyway.” Stark spun in place, looking around, before zoning in on Penelope. “Penny, was it?”

“Penelope,” the said girl said feebly.

“Right. Penny. So — where’s the stuff? In your room? Come on, show me.”

While he spoke, his voice had a hint of curiosity in it. Penelope didn’t look at Aunt May as she led Tony Stark to her messy room. He hadn’t sounded angry and she doubted she’d face any legal trouble, but his comment about her tinkering with the stuff in the alleyway (why hadn’t her Spider-Sense warned her about the camera?) made her feel suddenly very nervous, as though she was about to be graded on her performance. Her performance in messing about with alien technology.

“This is it?” Stark asked when they entered her room. He immediately spotted the alien tech on her desk. “This _is_ it.” He walked to the desk, confident and self-assured, as though this was his room. “So, Penny — sorry, Penelope is too long — you’re a techie, are you?”

Penelope swallowed the lump in her throat. “N-not really, no. I mean, I know quite a bit — more than most girls do — at my age, I guess — all ages, really — but I’m best at biology and chemistry and all that — not that I’m not good with technology — I _am_ — but I’ve been at that for a few hours now and I can’t really... get it.”

Stark looked at her from above his sunglasses. “Can’t get it? Seriously? It looks like you _fixed_ one of these anti-gravity things. Or so your notes say.”

“Well, yeah,” Penelope said, scratching her head, “but I had another as a, you know, guide — an example of how it should work — but I couldn’t reverse engineer it — not fully, at least —”

“Yeah, listen,” he interrupted, taking off his sunglasses and looking at her with a penetrating stare. “This? This right here? Kids don’t repair alien technology like this, much less reverse engineer it. That’s —” he gave her a bewildered look “— you know, insane. How old are you, kid?”

Penelope was sure her cheeks would burst from burning. “Fourteen...”

“Hmm.” Stark looked at her for a long moment. “You do this kind of stuff regularly? Did you have help with this? Your unusually attractive aunt, maybe?”

“My what? _No_ ,” Penelope said, flustered. “It was just me.”

Stark nodded and continued looking at her. After another stretch of silence, he finally said, “You wanna intern for me?”

Penelope blinked. “I — what?” Outside her room, Penelope heard Aunt May’s heartbeat increase with Tony Stark’s words, just as her own had. He had to be joking. 

“It’s gotta take some real genius to be able to repair alien technology in a few hours,” he continued as though she didn’t speak. “Pepper’s been pushing me to become a mentor or something, something ‘ _healthy_ ’ to keep myself occupied with, said it’d be good for me — whatever. I don’t have all day for an answer. And if this is a fluke,” he added, pointing at the Chitauri tech, “you’re out — I find someone else.” Tony Stark waved a hand in front of her face when she was unable to respond. “Uh, hello?”

Penelope said yes before she really thought about it. 


	2. Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was meant to be longer, but it'll be like another year by the time I finish it, so whatever.

It was safe to say it failed, Penelope thought, coughing. Some Spider-Bot this was, not being able to take a step before going up in fire and smoke. How Tony Stark could invent things on his first try she had no idea; not that she expected this to take less than a few tries; her webbing had been far more complex and difficult to create than this small little robot could ever wish to be. 

Then again, she had her suspicions that the spider bite had helped her along with creating the web formula. 

“You good, Penny?”

Penelope swept her hand through the smoke, clearing it. “Yeah!” she yelled back to Tony (“Don’t call me Mr. Stark, it makes me feel old”), grabbing a hammer and smashing her creation to even more pieces, so as to not arouse any suspicious as to what exactly she was making. No one knew her secret. Not Aunt May. Not Ned. Not Tony Stark. Not even J.A.R.V.I.S. knew, for she had strategically placed her workstation (she might have squealed when Mr. Stark had given her one) in a comfortable, cozy little corner of Tony’s workshop, away from prying cameras. 

Tony peaked his head in and blinked. “You’re not trying to replicate one of my suits again, are you?” 

Penelope swung her head around and pouted. “ _ No _ .”

Tony’s lips twitched as he entered the room. “Good. Pepper would kill me if I let you fly yourself into the sun or something.” 

“Pepper doesn’t even know I exist,” Penelope pointed out. 

Tony grimaced. “Yes, well, I was technically supposed to get an intern through applications and paperwork and all that —” he waved his hand impatiently “— legal stuff.”

“So... I’m here illegally?”

“Just because it’s not legal doesn’t mean it’s  _ il _ legal.” He pointed a finger at her. “Important life lesson there.”

Penelope made a disbelieving noise. 

Tony shrugged. “Pepper’ll deal with it when she gets back. Besides, what’s so wrong with just having you over to tinker and whatnot?”

Penelope gave a shrug too, as airy and offhand as his, but with a mocking edge to it. “Preeetty sure the media and internet won’t be as lighthearted as you. If you haven’t noticed, old man, you’re spending time alone with a teenage girl.”

Tony frowned at her. “Old man?” 

“That's all you got from that?” 

Tony dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Post about it on your Twitter or something, then.” He turned and walked back out, not waiting for a response. 

Penelope watched him go, thinking. In the week that she had accepted Tony’s offer, she hadn’t once thought what would happen if the world found out she was his intern; she had been too busy freaking out about it all. Her few hundred followers on Instagram and Twitter would probably explode into the hundreds of thousands. 

Or millions (jesusjesusjesus).

She pulled out her phone. She had encrypted practically everything she could to make sure not even the likes of Tony Stark would be able to get into it; this was made somewhat easier when she was able to use the exact same technology the man himself used, seeing as he had practically given it to her.

Penelope logged onto her personal accounts (she had reserved accounts for Spider-Man, all named  _ ItsyBitsySpidey _ ) and went to edit her bios. 

_ Penelope Parker, 14  _ was changed to  _ Penelope Parker, 14, Stark Intern _ .

Real exciting.

Confirming the edit to her Instagram and Twitter accounts, she switched to her Spider-Man accounts. While her personal accounts had about two hundred followers, totaled together, her Spider-Man accounts each had thousands. Her Spidey Instagram had twenty-two thousand. It was a bit silly for her to grin so much about this fact, but it did excite her. 

“Suuuper heeero,” she murmured, looking through the comments on her most recent Spider-Man posts. 

Unfortunately, they  _ were  _ Instagram comments and she wasn’t really sure if reading them was worth it in the end. There was lots of love and lots of hate, plenty of support and plenty of “Let the police do their job!” and “You wannabe hero!” type of comments. 

Penelope didn’t know how Tony did it. The amount of negative attention he received was truly staggering — though, she supposed, he had plenty of time to get used to it. 

Would she have to? 

It was only a matter of time before it was confirmed she, Penelope May Parker, was the first and only intern of Tony Stark — _the_ Tony Stark — the Iron Man! — _and_ _she was the intern of Tony Stark_ _and Tony Stark wanted her as his intern and she was now his intern because he wanted her to be his intern so she was his intern and oh my god_ —

She squealed — jumped out of her chair — was out of the room in a flash — and sprinted around the large living room of the Avengers Tower, resisting the almost-instinctual urge to hop on the ceiling or otherwise high spot. 

“I’m Tony Stark’s intern — I’m Tony Stark’s intern — I’m Tony Stark’s intern.” 

She repeated this again and again and she jumped around in joy. 

Tony sat on one of the couches, sipping coffee and reading something on his phone. It was a testament to how often she had done this that he didn’t even look up anymore. Though, Penelope’s enhanced vision caught his lips involuntarily twitching. 

“You should join the track team or something,” he said when she was all done and had leapt onto a couch. “You’d be a star.”

Penelope’s blush never made itself quite clear due to her sudden fear washing away any blood rushing to her cheeks. She really had to watch how fast she ran around and how much she did so. She had once easily caught up to a car going forty miles per hour, and it wouldn’t do to have Tony catch her jumping all over the place at inhuman speeds. 

“Sorry,” she said. “It just kind of builds up, you know? One minute, we’re talking — then I realize  _ we’re talking  _ — and — and —” 

“Uh huh,” said Tony, back to reading whatever it was he was reading. “Did you update your thingy on the thingies to say you’re an intern now?”

“Yeah!” Penelope said. “Don’t think anyone will believe it, really, but —”

“Yeah, well, they will now,” Tony said, looking up at her. “I just followed your Twitter account. And I follow like four people. Congratulations, big shot, you’re famous.” 

And with that, he got up and moved to the kitchen, which was really a part of the enormous living room. 

Penelope stared at the spot he had sat in for a long moment before finally pulling out her phone. It had been set on silent. But now, as she unlocked it and looked through her notifications, she saw what an absolutely life-changing decision this was. 

And oh god, Aunt May and her apartment —

“No worries,” said Tony, as though he had read her mind, “I’ll make sure you and May are safe from paparazzi or — uh —”

“Assassins,” Penelope whispered, her eyes going wide. 

“Uh, no,” said Tony, frowning, “totally not what I was going to say.”

She turned her wide-eyed gaze to Tony. “You killed us.”

Tony blinked. “What? No, no I didn’t! I already have it all figured out! I talked with May about it, actually — and she’s okay with it! She’s agreed to move to a penthouse I bought you two.” Penelope, whose wide eyes had been merely a joke before, now was really shocked. “Yeah, she had that face too. Wouldn’t accept at first, something about not taking money or charity — anyway I used you against her, said you could get in danger if she didn’t accept it.” Tony shrugged. “Didn’t really have a choice after that.” 

Penelope stared. 

Tony frowned. “That sounds bad.” 

She sat down on the couch heavily, staring out into the city. “Mr. Stark...”

“Tony!”

“Tony,” Penelope corrected, “you... you... you bought us  _ a penthouse _ ?” Her voice became high-pitched at the end. 

“It’s nice,” Tony said, grimacing. “Really. And it’s already bought, so you can’t take it back now, unless you want me to waste millions of dollars —”

“ _ Millions of dollars _ ?!”

Tony’s grimace deepened. “Wow, I’m astronomically bad at this.” He sighed. “Look, it’s not me just trying to spoil you — well, partly — but I  _ do _ want you safe. You really think it’s a smart idea to stay at your current apartment? Not that it’s bad, of course, but I have enemies and the penthouse will be guarded, secured, you won’t have to worry about your Aunt May; she’ll be closer to her work, you’ll be closer to the Tower — which, by the way, is something I’ve been thinking about.”

Penelope eyed him warily. “What is it?” 

“You wanted a suit, right?” he said. “An Iron Man suit?”

Penelope’s mouth moved wordlessly. 

“I mean, there’d be no weapons on it, of course — it would be used purely for flying. It’s not built yet, actually, and I won’t be building it for you.” Tony sat down on the couch next to Penelope, who was frozen in shock. “I figure we could do it together, a team building exercise or whatever — I dunno, the Cap said something about that being good for two people bonding; plus, you know, it would be good for you to know how it works and how to fix it.”

Penelope stayed silent, and her phone continued to vibrate with notifications. 

Tony continued: “I know we’ve known each other for like a week, but this is a good thing. It is!” he claimed, seeing her skeptical look. “Do you have any idea how many people have rivaled my intelligence? There aren’t many, and those few don’t ever really swing by...” He positively reeked of arrogance as he talked, but Penelope could’ve sworn she saw a hint of something like longing in his eyes. Was Tony Stark —  _ the _ Tony Stark — seriously lonely? 

“I... okay,” said Penelope. “If Aunt May is really okay with it...”

“She is,” said Tony. “Her pride is hurt, but she knows it’s best for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment and kudos to show your support! It really motivates me to keep writing.


End file.
